Pride StoryBundle Mini-interview with R.R. Angell, author of BEST GAME EVER

[catherineldf]

Next up on my list (see A.C. Wises' interviews here) of Pride StoryBundle authors to interview is author R.R. Angell. In addition to this terrific novel about queer college students and virtual gaming, Bob has had stories appear in Asimov's and The Baltimore Review, amongst other places. Welcome, Bob!

•   Can you tell us about the book you have in this StoryBundle?

Best Game Ever is a nerdy virtual reality tech / queer love story set at Bolin College. This group of gay, nonbinary, and straight programming geeks are on a VR design team racing toward a deadline. Robby’s roommate dies of an apparent suicide after playing their favorite VR first-person flyer game, Flying Squirrels. Robby suspects foul play. With the help of his teammates, Robby exposes a threat to all VR gamers, and the SaikoVR AI game engine, Virtuella, fights back. Can Robby and his friends defeat Virtuella, save the world, and find love in the BEST GAME EVER? And will Robby ever figure out that he’s hopelessly in love with the unattainable gender-fluid Miles? 

I had the idea for this novel while on a business trip to Silicon Valley where I was at VPL Research with Jaron Lanier getting to play with his new virtual reality worlds. They were clunky by today’s standards, and you could walk or fly through walls and “solid” objects. On the drive back to the hotel, I got nervous about my expectations of reality, as if I’d been deprogrammed slightly and was afraid I might try to drive through a guardrail. I started writing the novel in 1992 and have rewritten it over five times. The last complete rewrite did the trick.  

•   What do you find engaging/important about writing LGBTQ/queer fiction? 

I write the stories that I want to read, the ones that I don’t see out there in the world. I like exploring ideas, and have always written to make queer life the most normal and accepted thing in the world in all my fiction. A lot of my literary works explore the constraints and restraints society imposes as it guides and molds us to fit in. Most of that is for me, a way to understand how I got to this point in my life.   

•   What books or stories do you have out that readers of this StoryBundle might enjoy? 

My queer SF novella, In The Space of Nine Lives, is about a boy growing up on a deep space transport ship whose life course is determined by his love for another boy. It was bravely and originally published in Asimov’s way back in January 2006, and republished as a stand-alone novella in 2019. Print and ebook versions through my website or at Amazon.  

Two other queer literary stories are available free online. Lost Anchors is a story about an aging gay couple. A Dry Wish is the story about a failing blogger riding out a binge in Vienna, Austria. You can find them here.

Thanks, Bob!